I work them, so I never just go and attend them - the experience is so much better when you're "in". I love the interaction, quite love the babysitting part of it even.
Also when I enjoy it, I will tell them & and it always work because artists know that if the local tech found them good, that same dude who see so much stuff day-in, day-out, it (probably) means something.
You meet jerks, of course. You learn to provide them with minimal service, but clean and decent for the public. You meet fantastic people who fail to make it through to the audience, and that's heartbreaking. You learn to put 200% of yourself into a musical style you don't enjoy because the dudes on stage are killing it and the audience is loving it - who cares if Jazz Manouche is the most boring, written down and set in stone style ever.
My most stupid interaction was, at the end of a programme that included both Chopin and Steve Reich, to tell the Reich' piece clarinetist "sometimes, Chopin is boring. Especially in regard to Reich". The Guy was in agreement lol.
To push it a bit more contemporary: Peter Cawdron and his "First Contact " series, which is infinite variations (about 30 as of now) of making first contact with an alien sentience of any type.
It's excellent, and despite being excellent only available on kindle / kindle unlimited because as an independent author, that's the only way for him to publish & make a buck out if it.
Peter Cawdron is on Mastodon btw